24 November 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
Click here for more images
We gathered in the road in front of the Agricultural College of Beit Hanoun, the same place that we gather every week. There were about forty people, members of the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative, the International Solidarity Movement and citizens of Beit Hanoun. Like every week, we planned to march into the no go zone. The chanting started immediately, with more energy than usual. Soon music began to pour from the loudspeakers. The march was to begin.
We walked down the road, into the no go zone. We walked past the flag that we had painted on piece of rubble, past the olive grove that we planted last month, we marched all the way to the flag which we have left to fly over the no go zone. We only enter the no go zone once per week, but we the signs of our presence are always here, the olives the flag. If Israel destroys them, we return them again. The no go zone seems to encapsulate Israel’s attitude toward Palestine, erasure, nothing is left living there, even memory is erased, it becomes truly a land without people. The people who have been left without land are not the Zionists, but the refugees that are confined to the prison that is Gaza.
We reach the flag, the flag has become tattered from its weeks of flying amidst the bullets of the no go zone. A few weeks ago the Israelis had shot the flag pole until it fell; we planted it again that day. Now though, it is tattered, some young men pull down the flag, and replace it with a new one. We are standing only about 70 meters from the wall, six meters of gray concrete ugliness. Smokestacks belch pollution in the distance. Sabur Zaaneen from the Local Initiative speaks, “The resistance will continue until the Israeli occupation is no more, we ask the free people of the world to stand with us in our resistance to oppression.” An Italian activist speaks; she too denounces the occupation and its crimes and calls on the peoples of the world to support the Palestinian struggle for freedom. We leave to sound of music.
As we walk back to Beit Hanoun, Sabur gets a call. It is the office at Erez, at the border crossing. They are warning him that the Israeli’s had wanted to fire into the crowd, the Israeli’s claimed that they were scared in their concrete towers of civilian protesters with their flags. Perhaps we were like a nightmare, the people that they thought that they had disappeared forever coming back to haunt them, ghosts returning to their homes which had been stolen from them. That is the problem with living on stolen land, in stolen homes, sometimes, no matter how far away you have driven the owners, sometimes you see them again, and you are reminded that the land you live in belongs to someone else. We are not ghosts, we can be killed by Israeli bullets, but no matter how many you kill, the land remains stolen, and nothing stolen is ever really yours. No matter how big your guns, how thick the concrete of your walls, you are afraid of the ghosts which haunt the scene of your crime.
25 November 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
Four houses and one mosque were destroyed this morning, November 24th, in the villages in the south of the West Bank. Around 10 am, fifty soldiers and seven police cars arrived to village Susiya. Two bulldozers destroyed the house of Musa Magna’s family and two women were arrested after attempting to protect the house.
Demolitions in the far south - For more images click here
In addition to these demolitions, the Israeli military also plan to destroy part of a school, the road leading from the village to the school and a several tents in the village.
House demolitions also occurred in Um Fagarah, a few kilometres south of Susiya. The Israeli military destroyed a house which was home to a family of twelve, some tents and a pen holding sheep and rabbits, some of which were killed. Two women were arrested and the occupation forces broke the leg of one elder woman in the village. The houses of Hammamdi family were destroyed even though the demolition order had not been finalised as the court hadn’t yet reached a final verdict. The military also destroyed a mosque in the village.
Both of these shepherd’s villages are often attacked by settlers and subjected to demolitions by the Israeli military.
Fida Far is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movemenet (name has been changed).
24 November 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
Raed Atrash, 25, is a presenter and journalist working in Hebron; his work focuses on prisoner’s issues. He interviews prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families, and he writes articles and presents programmes on the issue. Issa Amro is the director of Youth Against Settlements (YAS), a nonviolent organization protesting against the occupation.
Israeli Occupation soldiers in Hebron
They spoke to ISM about political organization, resistance and education in prison and how the media covers prisoner issues.
ISM: Can you explain how life in prison is organized for Palestinian political prisoners?
Attrash: Life inside prison is organised very well. Every prisoner who is arrested by the Israeli army will go to the prison and align himself with a political party…for each party, there is a leadership committee which organises the life of these prisoners.
Prison is divided into many parts; in each part there is a commitee from all the parties which decides rules that the prisoners have to follow in order to organise their life. There is a cultural committe in order to raise the awareness amongst the prisoners of what’s happening outside and inside to give them the experience to deal with their situation. There is also a management committee to solves clashes between prisoners if something happens. There is a religious commitee which will protect the right to pray for every prisoner.
There are rarely clashes between different political groups in prison. There are a lot of problems between the prisoners and the Israeli management – they interfere and they try to make problems for the prisoners. They try to interrogate them in the night in order to annoy them and to create instability in their lives. They also try to strip search them. They try to take the machines which prisoners use – televisions or hot-plates. It’s not easy to live without these things.
There is also an educational committee in prison. There are very intelligent prisoners inside the prison who have a very high level of education. The task of this committee is to teach the prisoners how to read and write – simple education.
Five years ago the [Israeli] management allowed papers and pens into prison. Since Shalit [was captured] they prevented books and paper from entering. They are allowed now to buy pencils but not new books.
ISM: Are any Palestinian prisoners studying for degrees or taking high school exams?
Attrash: Absolutely none.
Amro: In the past they were letting the schoolchildren take the high school exams but not anymore – not the high schools or even any degrees as a collective punishment for all the prisoners for Shalit. After Shalit was captured they launched a new law (‘Shalit’s Law’) against the prisoners. After he was released everyone thought they might stop Shalit’s Law, to let the Palestinian prisoners study, to let the families from Gaza vistit their family members. Until now, nothing has changed – only the isolation [has ended] because of the hunger strikes.
Attrash: Many prisoners volunteer to teach the other prisoners but the main issue is to have a formal education – to have a degree at the end of the education and they are not allowed to do it. They call it ‘self-education’, the prisoners teach each other many subjects. It’s continuous and working well – you need education to fill your time, otherwise you will go crazy.
ISM: Can you describe the political education and resistance that takes place in prison?
Attrash: They teach the prisoners about the Palestinian cause in general, about the history of the Palestinian people and the naqba [tragedy] and teach them many case studies in the world; Che Guevara and these kind of revolutions – the French, Indian, Colombian – to use them as case studies for revolutions across the world. There are many political meetings, debates, discussions among the prisoners to teach them and empower their discussions. For many prisoners this is a form of steadfastness for them and a form of remaining in their cause and supporting their motivations and their willingness to learn more and more. Without this kind of education and empowerment I don’t know if they can survive.
[Regarding resistance in prison] usually they have many steps and they have their own nonviolent resistance history – the hunger strike and disobedience. They have representatives in there, a structure, people who negotiate with the authorities, they try to talk to them and convince them. They start with boycotts, not listening, not going for the count, missing meals until they go to the hunger strike. After the hunger strike is the disobedience – they ignore the security completely and they don’t listen at all – which makes it very hard and its not easy to count the prisoners every three hours without their willingness.
Amro: Historically nonviolent resistance was very successful inside Israeli jails. Many writers wrote about the prison resistance – it’s nonviolent resistance. They got many achievements; they got the right to education, to family visits, more TV channels, reading, writing, food – prisoners negotiate about every small detail of their lives. It’s a continuous conflict and it’s about who will give up first and usually the prisoners get their rights through many hunger strikes – many people died because of their resistance. If you are strong, they [the Israelis] listen to you.
Attrash: Israel considers children older than 15 as adult – although from 15-18 they put them in a special jail, they don’t want them to let the political prisoners affect them politically.
All the prisoners consider the jail as a school. Prisoners in Israeli jails learns political issues, languages, religion – anything you can imagine. It’s not optional for the prisoner not to study or participate in these courses – all the Palestinian parties/factions oblige their members to join the education system – both political and otherwise. There are some optional courses, which are extra, but the basic education is compulsory. This obligation fulfills the prisoner’s needs, so you don’t have anyone refusing this.
Many prisoners go into jail without any political education. When they go in they have a lot of time to study why they are doing this [resisting] and they study the theory behind their practice. They give them all these case studies and international law, tactics to resist and they share their experience fighting the occupation.
Because of the division that happened between Fatah and Hamas, the West Bank and Gaza, the institution that created the unity charter was the prisoners. The prisoners from Fatah and Hamas inside Israeli jails had a meeting and published a unity charter and now all the Palestinian factions are implementing it outside jails.
Amro: The prisoners are creative in what they do and they have a huge influence on the outside, this is why you saw all the people were more than happy when the Shalit deal gave them hundreds of prisoners, it was 10% of the Palestinian prisoners but the happiness was much more [than this] as if all the prisoners were released. All Palestinians are united in listening to the prisoners – they see them as holy people, in spite of their political background or agenda. All of them are equal and all of them are heroes in our eyes.
ISM: What are your opinions of the recent prisoner exchange deal?
Attrash: It’s a very good achievement to release even one prisoner. This deal released 315 prisoners on life sentences in Israeli jails and usually they don’t give them a release date – even their bodies usually stay in Israeli jails [after they die], they keep them in special freezers or they bury them in cemetaries – just to punish the families. It was a good achievement.
Amro: I have a poltical concern about the deal. I thought that if they insisted to release Marwan Bargouti he would make a change in Palestinian political life, especially to Fatah. Marwan Bargouti will start the third intifada for sure. He’s the only one who can unify Fatah and all the Palestinian factions, everyone agrees on his leadership. He was leading the second intifada and sentenced to six life sentences. It gives him uncountable credit from the Palestinians from all factions. All the factions consider all the prisoners as heroes. If he is already a leader and he is high up in Fatah – this will make him the future President of Palestine. [There will be a third intifada] next year or the year after – we are very close. It will for sure be an nonviolent intifada, as the first intifada.
The Palestinians learned from the second intifada and the political factions, even Hamas, are now talkign about nonviolence and the influence from the Arab Spring is so influential and we have very good experience. The second intifada was problematic for us. It was not normal – we were led to the second intifada. I was one of the people starting the second intifada because I was a leader in my university. How it became a violent intifada or an armed resistance, I don’t know. I stopped following it after it became an armed intifada. I can’t use arms. The majority of the guns were from Israel – Israel wants us to be violent and to keep us violent to justify killing our children and killing us. In the beginning of the second intifada the students were demonstrating in the streets and one day 10 people were killed in Hebron and they were only nonviolent demonstrators. More than 100 people injured. They were shooting at us with rubber bullets – I was injured – from zero distance [point blank range] which made it hard for the intifada to stay nonviolent – it was not proportional force. They deal with us as gunmen – they don’t have any methodology to stop the nonviolent resistance, they are only trained to shoot, and to kill, and to be violent.
The hatred inside them is so high. Blind support from the UK,USA,Germany– if you know that all the strong countries support you, why follow international law? Gaddafi described his people as ‘rabbits’ – they [the Israeli authorities] don’t even see us as rabbits, they see us as less than rabbits or mice. They don’t see us as human beings, so we deserve to die. A rabbi in Kiryat Arba [an Israeli settlement near Hebron] wrote a book syaing that you are allowed to kill Palestinian children, you are allowed to kill Palestinians even if they are not attacking you. He is a religious leader and he is trying to transmit this poison to his followers. Hate speech in Israel is illegal….I filed complaints. You can’t challenge violence, even with all the evidence – you will not achieve anything in Israeli law [if you are Palestinian] it will vanish in Israeli courts.
Everyday in 2008 I went to the police station to make complaints. I went once to the court last year and they found him [a settler] guilty – he confessed that he broke my camera. I had the video to prove that he attacked me. The prosecutor representing me didn’t [even] want him to go to jail or to do voluntary work, she just wanted to send him to the behavioural officer where they tell him ‘how come you let him film you doing that, next time don’t leave evidence’ – this is the behavioural officer! To file complaints to the same authorities that are violating the law – it’s useless.
ISM: What motivates you [Attrash} to focus on prisoners’ issues?
Attrash: It’s my patriotic duty, my national duty. I am supporting human rights and the prisoners cause is a human rights case, it’s not even a political thing. I have been in jail in 2009 for six months for ‘incitement’ against Israel, through my work.
Amro: If he was in a political party or in a poltical movement they would not accuse him of incitement – as a journalist or an activist these are the only charges that they can use. They use it for many other Palestinian activists and journalists.
Attrash: When I was released, one of the intelligence commanders told me ‘I hope not to listen or hear you on the radio again’. I work with 10 radio stations now! During the investigation they showed me the timetable of my programmes and they were following my media programmes.
Amro: This shows for me that it is not about terrorism or violating Israeli law. On the contrary, putting a journalist in the Israeli jail is violating Israeli law and international law and the Geneva Conventions. He has special protection as a journalist. This is one of the main violations of the Israelis and why you don’t have many Palestinian journalists working hard against the occupation as you are a target.
Even if you are not a terrorist and you don’t believe in violence, if you are a journalist, a writer, a musician, a football player – whatever – you are a target. They are targeting any active member in the Palestinian community, it’s about destroying Palestinian society and this is why we [YAS] are a target here because we are trying to empower the community. They want the community to be without a leader, without a guide. All the Palestinian leaders, in spite of their ideology, are a target for the Israeli security in a different way. If you are within the law they put you in jail according to the law – I was accused of incitement and it wasn’t a mistake – it is a systematic way to kill any voice against the occupation.
Take Abu Mazen’s step to go to the UN [bid at UN] it is a completely nonviolent step, he is allowed to do it according to international law, and they can oppose him politically, not to threaten to destroy Ramallah or theWest Bankor to cut the money. But the international community is silent. The Israeli security forces are the real terrorists, not us.
Attrash: I was once in the studio giving my programme – I was live – and the Israeli forces came and stopped the programme and raided the radio station and detained me for an hour. This is normal for the Israeli security. There is more harassment when I am out working in the field; they detained me many times. I was detained at one of the checkpoints after I participated in the journalists forum election. They detained me for 2 hours even though they knew I am a journalist and I showed them my ID as a journalist…I [personally] know 10 journalists in jail but there are a lot more.
Amro: You are a terrorist in spite of any identity you have. All the Palestinians are terrorists – this is how they treat us! We are all Bin Laden! This is how they try to show us to the world.
ISM: How important is it to be sensitive to terminology in your media work?
I took a special course in the terminology of international law about what to use exactly to suit [fit in] international law, not Palestinian culture or Israeli propaganda.
ISM: What do you make of the media coverage of the prisoner exchange?
Attrash: The international media covered the Shalit case and put him equal with 6000 Palestinian prisoners. Some media agencies ignored the 6000 and only mentioned the victim who was Shalit, and the majority of the Palestinian prisoners are political prisoners and they didn’t participate in killing Israelis, however Shalit was inside a tank [as part of an occupying force that killed people], he was captured from his tank, not from his house, or his city or his school or his university. The Palestinian media was talking about him as a normal prisoner and telling him that he should be treated according to our Islamic culture and that he should be safe and treated well, not as happened to our prisoners in Israeli jails who are suffering daily.
Amro: All of the big international media agencies are biased, all of them are pro-Israel and pro the Zionist movement and they lie and manipulate and they hide a lot of obvious facts. We use social media [to get past the media agencies], it’s our method to teach all the people in the world what’s happening.
ISM: But surely there are still many unbiased and fair journalists out there?
Amro: Let’s say that all international journalists are either pro-Israel or neutral. I see the neutral people as biased – when you see violations, when you see oppressed people and you are neutral; you are biased and participating with the oppressor. I meet many journalists who are pro-Palestinians but they are a tiny amount compared [to pro-Israelis]. I’m not against Israel by the way – I am aganist the occupation! This is very important – if you are against the occupation, it doesn’t mean that you are against Israel – on the contrary, if you are against the occupation you are going to protect Israel in the long-term. Not having a solution [to the occupation] doesn’t helpIsrael.
ISM: If this is true, how do you explain it?
Amro: People are afraid of [being called] anti-semitic. I met one of the main journalists from the Washington Post. He said ‘either you are pro-Israel or you are silent, this is how to be successful’. What about transparency, freedom of information etc and what about funds? ‘They will cut your salary.’ Capitalism, globalisation, all the big companies in the world are owned by the Jews or they are cowards. Usually rich people are cowards. I don’t think Obama is against out cause, I think he is pro-our cause but I don’t think he thinks his country’s interest is with our cause. This is when we will reach our freedom, when our cause will be connected with the national interests of theUK,Sweden,USA,China,Russia – it’s about politicians, not about principles, morals or anything like that. There are many good people in Israel who want to live in peace and love with the Palestinians but they are controlled and hidden [by the media].
Ben Lorber and Alistair George (name has been changed) are volunteers with International Solidarity Movement.
23 November 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
Dkaika Bedouins face expulsion - Click here for more images
The entire Bedouin village of Dkaika encounters demolitions, and all the villagers face expulsion. Every single construction of Dkaika has a demolition order totally over 75 demolition orders including a mosque, a school, a graveyard, water cisterns, housing tents, and folds for sheep.
This Thursday, on the 24th of November, the Israeli Supreme court will decide if it will accept the interim injunction submitted by villagers in collaboration with Rabbis for Human Rights.
The village of Dkaika has a history of receiving demolition orders as early as 1998, and since then they have been facing demolitions. The latest demolition orders arrived the 1st November 2011. The village received 36 demolition orders covering 46 structures. This January, 17 structures were demolished in Dkaika including a part of the school and family houses, which left families sleeping outdoors in the winter time and school children studying under the open sky.
The Israeli Civil Administration plans to expel the Bedouins in Dkaika to a village 6 kilometers north of Dkeika called Hameeda. The Civil Adminstration reasons that in Hameeda members from the same Bedouin tribe called Ka’bne reside there and thus the expulsion is justified. Rabbis for Human Rights consider the planned expulsion to be a violation of international law. Yet the issue is complicated since none of the Bedouins of Dkaika have land in that village, and the tribe system of the Bedouins makes it impossible for the Bedouins to move to other Bedouins’ land.
In reaction to the demolitions, the head of Dkaika community, Mukhtar Yussif Nadjada said, “If they come and demolish our houses we will start rebuilding the same day. We have lived on this land before the creation of Israel and we will die on this land.”
The ICA (Israeli Civil Administration) usually puts pressure and building restrictions on villages in area C by using area zone planning. They draw a circle fitting the needs of the Occupation and name it the buildup area. This causes a lot of problems for villagers because it restricts their possibilities of building on their land, and normally it supports the expansion of settlements and is of no infrastructural use for Palestinians. In the case of Dkaika, ICA is not even willing to create an area zone planning. ICA claims that the Bedouin village has no self sustainability, and for this reasons they will expel all citizens of Dkaika to Hameeda.
Mukhtar Yussif Nadjada, the head of Dkaika, said, “The planning of the Occupation ONLY suits the building of the soldiers and settlers who expand. We live near the separation wall, and that’s why they want to expel us.”
The expulsion of Bedouins in the South Hebron Hills are similar to the plans of expulsion of Bedouins in all area C in the West Bank and of the Bedouins living in the Negreb dessert, according to B’Tselem.
Aida Gerard is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
23 November 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
Amer Ahmad Al-Qwasmah, 45, was released on 18 October 2011 as part of the prisoner exchange deal that saw 477 Palestinian prisoners (with 550 to be released at a further time, thought to be in December) in exchange for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured by Hamas in 2006. Al-Qwasmah served 23 years in prison after being convicted of resistance within the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine).
ISM: What were you convicted of?
Qwasmah: I belonged to a military group and I participated in an operation in 1987, several months before the intifada started, to kill an Israeli man in Jerusalem. It was because we were under occupation. We thought it was a civilian but after he had been killed the Israeli’s announced he was an air-force pilot. It was in the street in the Old City. He was shot….it was just chance [random]…there were five people in my group; two are still in prison – one still has eight months and the other has four more years.
ISM: Can you describe your arrest and what happened afterwards?
For more on Hebron's solidarity with prisoners during their strike, click here
Qwasmah: I used to live in Jerusalem and came back toHebrononce a week to visit my parents. One day I was visiting my parents and they [Israeli security] came to the home and they arrested me. They demolished the house and they prevented my family from building a new building until the PA [Palestinian Authority] started operating here in 1997. This was common at the time.
They took me to Muscovia interrogation centre in Jerusalem. It is used as a detention place, for interrogation and as a prison. After 13 days my lawyer came to see me and I was naked…there were wounds and cuts all over the back [from being beaten]….they [the Israeli security forces] put me on a small chair, 3cm above the ground, and your hands and feet are handcuffed to the chair [in a very uncomfortable position] so that you can’t move. They also handcuff your hand to the ground for several hours [forcing you to crouch] and then they let you change position and sometimes an investigator comes and makes you stand on tip-toes.
Another kind of interrogation [technique] is that they send you to the freezer – this is unique toHebron. They put you in a very cold room and put you in a small chair and handcuff your hands to the chair and the chair to the ground to make sure you can’t move. They put a very bad-smelling cloth, worn by other prisoners, over your head and face. There are no holes to see or breathe through and they put me in this situation for 20 hours.
ISM: What happened after the period of interrogation?
Qwasmah: They sent me to Ramle jail, inIsrael. We decided to not go to court, we refused to sit in the court, so we were judged [in absentia] even though we weren’t there. My sentence was forever – 999, 999, 999 years! They intend to keep you for that long in the freezer. For civilians, a life sentence is for 25 years and they usually serve 15 or 15 years and then they’re released. I accepted this life because I carried a message – I was a fighter and in the resistance and I knew the consequences of resisting the occupation. I knew [when I joined the resistance] that I might be killed or spend my life in jail. But I always thought if I would be jailed, then one day I would be released.
ISM: What were the conditions like after you were sentenced?
Qwasmah: Prison is a lot of suffering, the suffering has got worse after 2003; when Ariel Sharon was prime minister he wanted to punish prisoners more and more. Each year was more complicated and there was more suffering – they prevented relatives visiting, they made us pay fines (like 500 shekels). They count prisoners three times a day, in the morning, around noon and the evening – if you are 2 minutes late for counting, then maybe they wouldn’t let your parents visit you, or you have to pay a fine, or they sent you to a tiny isolation cell. It is common for them to ignore you when you need medical treatment. They also strip search parents and family coming to visit you – imagine what that is like for a woman. It is not humanitarian behaviour [it is humiliating] when they ask a woman to remove all her clothes for security reasons and they make them wait for several hours until they bring you to see them.
For around 10-12 years they didn’t let my brothers or sisters visit me due to ‘security concerns’. They didn’t let my mother visit me for 1 1/2 years – they tried to say we weren’t related but she is my mother! That happened with lots of prisoners. The Shabak [Israeli security] use it as part of their psychological torture and the interrogation; if they say ‘no’, the Red Cross can’t do anything.
They [the prison authorities] physically tortured me. They used to put us in a room with around 7cm of water on the floor, so we couldn’t stay comfortable in the room. Sometimes they made us stay a day and sometimes a few hours. They killed prisoners [by torture] – Mustafa Al-Qaawi was a doctor who went to study in Romania, when he got back to Palestine he was arrested, interrogated and killed – they put him on the roof of the military building in Hebron and the weather was cold, it was snowing at that time. He died from the cold.
One prisoner was arrested in 1996 and he has been in isolation since that time. Another prisoner was in isolation since 1995 and was even in isolation during hunger strike. One prisoner from Gaza was kept in isolation for 20 years and now he can’t communicate with anyone, not even his family. Isolation is a slow-death. They isolated me for eight months – with one other person in a small room. They said that I tried to smuggle mobile phones into prison – I didn’t do it. There was no heating. I didn’t see my parents for 8 months.
Access to news did not used to exist in jail, like many things – like books. When I was in jail I participated in different hunger strikes for different demands. One of these demands was for the media – for newspapers and for books. Only recently can you get TV in prison but now the channels are limited, there are mainly Israeli or Russian channels allowed because Israel controls the satellite… the newspapers are Israeli and in Hebrew and you have to subscribe.
The Oslo agreement [signed in 1993] affected the daily life in prison. The Prisoners Committee was very strong [before the agreement] – there were schools and universities inside the jail. But after the Oslo agreement, some of the prisoners started acting as if they were released from prison already. Israel brought us papers and told us to sign these papers and they would release us – to say that we support the Oslo agreement but we [the PFLP] were against this agreement so we refused to sign. Four or five times they demanded we sign this paper and we kept refusing. Some Fatah prisoners signed and thought they would be released and starting cancelling the political meetings and they even burned some political booklets because they said ‘we are released!’ but the shock came to them when Israel refused. This affected the situation of the prisoners. The people who were released were mainly short-term prisoners or they were criminals – in prison for drugs. Not many political prisoners – only the short-termers.
In prison we used to play sport, especially in the morning – it used to be one hour a day but after some hunger strikes it was changed to four hours a day. We also used to have political meetings and discussions. We had official political meetings around twice a week and we often discussed some books or some poets. The Israelis could listen but they don’t care. In the beginning [of my jail term] it was forbidden for the prisoners to read books, or newspapers, or watch TV and have meetings – but the history of resistance, the hunger strikes were a strategic weapon that we used to resist and to survive in Israeli jail. Even pens and paper used to be forbidden– prisoners would write on toilet paper.
ISM: How did you deal with this treatment?
Qwasmah: I am a representative of the resistance and even though there was a lot of torture I coped. I was strong and showed them the power of the resistance – maybe that’s why them kept torturing me more and more to break me and my psychological health. I still suffer from health problems in my stomach and my back – just today I was in the hospital for my colon problem and problems with my digestion. This happened because of the interrogation.
In prison they use Acamol for everything; headaches, stomach problems – anything. The prisoners used to joke about it and call it the ‘magic medicine’. My interrogation and torture was for around 15 days but because it was very intense it felt like two years.
ISM: What was it like to hear that you would be released?
Qwasmah: I didn’t care that my name was on the list, I could have checked but I didn’t. I found out just six days before I was released. These six days were difficult – for the last 24 years I had always been welcoming and then saying goodbye to other people. Many people cry when they have to leave jail. Before, it was others leaving us – now I had to leave the others. There are prisoners who have been in jail a very long time but they have not been released – so I was sad and unhappy [for them]. I was upset and it made those six days so hard – harder even than a hunger strike or interrogation – because I left people who I had lived with for a long time. The Israelis allowed the prisoners to go and say goodbye to all the prisoners but I couldn’t say goodbye to anyone, it was too hard.
ISM: What is your opinion of the prisoner exchange deal?
Qwasmah: Your country, the USA, and western countries don’t care about Palestinian prisoners. All they care about is the Shalit case – which for them was a political and humanitarian case but they don’t care about the Palestinians…even people who care about humanitarian issues. The Shalit deal is very good but I feel sad for the remaining prisoners. I want to askEurope; what about the Palestinian prisoners?
ISM: What are your plans now that you’ve been released?
Qwasmah: First of all I have to get used to being free, to look around myself and spend time with my family and then I will think about work. Then I will look for a wife and get married. I feel like there are a lot of obstacles when I got out as I moved from one life to another life and I have to take some time to adapt.
ISM: Do you regret what you did or feel a sense of guilt?
Qwasmah: Before, after and during prison I was proud of what I did, I spent my youth in prison…we are offering our lives for the resistance and we can offer more and more forPalestine. As Palestinians, our lives are political but I am not going to focus on politics until I take some time and adapt to social life and to my family – I have brothers, sisters, aunts that I don’t know. I can think about politics later. All forms of available resistance are needed to resistIsrael.
Alistair George is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
